


Some place to go

by renecdote



Series: hc_bingo 2017 [8]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Damian overreacts, Dick is a Good Brother, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Jason is a good brother, Runaway, and Jason saves the day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 20:33:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12848970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renecdote/pseuds/renecdote
Summary: After a (perceived) mistake on patrol, Damian runs away. Well, he tries to at least.





	Some place to go

**Author's Note:**

> For the “runaway” square on my h/c bingo card. I got requests for Jason & Damian and Damian & Dick during their Batman & Robin run, so I combined them.

It’s the best thing to do. That’s what Damian tells himself, over and over, in his mind as he slings his backpack over his shoulder, under his breath as he closes the door behind him. He’s doing this because it’s best. Not because he’s a coward or he’s selfish. This is for Grayson.

He has, despite his initial impressions, found himself becoming attached to the man who has taken over his father’s mantle. The man who is, by law if not by blood, his eldest brother. The man who accepted him and gave him a greater purpose. The man who gave him  _ Robin _ .

The man he failed.

The man he is leaving to protect.

The man whose disappointment he is avoiding.

Leaving is a necessary preemptive measure. He’s just doing it before Grayson or Pennyworth tell him he has to go.

—

Coming to is a slow, arduous process. Like fighting through cotton wool while Killer Croc tries to drag him back down into the darkness. When Dick manages to blink away the fuzzy edge and keep the world in focus for more than a second, he’s not surprised to find himself in the bunker’s medical unit. He is also, apparently, on a lot of morphine since he very clearly remembers his arm snapping in at least two places but the stabbing pain is gone. There is only the blocky weight of a cast and an ache which sharpens when he moves.

“Alfie?” he slurs because he can’t see the butler but he knows he must be close by. And even if he isn’t, he has a way of appearing just when he’s needed. As expected, Alfred walks into his line of sight a moment later and Dick gives him a dopey smile. “Hey.”

“Good morning, Master Richard,” Alfred says. “How are you feeling?”

Dick hums a little as he rolls his head to the side, gaze glancing off gleaming benches and neatly stored medical equipment. “Not bad,” he says after a moment, distracted by the absence of something... Someone. He expected (hoped for) Damian to be nearby. He’s not sure why; the kid doesn’t seem like the type to sit bedside vigils. But Dick is sure that before he passed out, he’d seen something in Damian’s eyes. He’s sure that something had been fear.

Fear that Dick wouldn’t be okay?

Fear that it was his fault?

Dick doesn’t know, but he intends to find out. No matter how much coaxing and wheedling it takes. He needs to know the root cause of that unusual expression on the boy’s face so he can reassure him. Tell him that Dick is going to be fine, that what happened wasn’t his fault.

Except, when he finally convinces Alfred to let him upstairs, and then disobeys medical orders to “rest, Master Dick” in favour of traipsing around the penthouse in search of his young partner and brother, Damian is nowhere to be found.

—

It takes a few hours to get to the edge of the city. He couldn’t risk taking one of the vehicles from the bunker, not with Alfred and Dick (though unconscious) down there, and he’s sure any of the them would have trackers anyway. So he takes to the streets and rooftops, picking his way through Old Gotham and the Diamond District, the Upper West Side, across the Finger River, toward Trigate Bridge. Not the fastest route out of Gotham, but the one most suitable to Damian’s purposes. It allows him to stop at one of the lesser-kept League safe houses in Coventry and appropriate some supplies.

It’s as he’s sneaking back out of the innocuous apartment building that he runs into trouble.

Tall, gruff, helmet-wearing trouble. Although, despite the ever-present leather jacket, he isn’t running around as the Red Hood at the moment. Ripped jeans, sunglasses on top of his head, a plastic grocery bag dangling from one hand. This isn’t an orchestrated retrieval. This is the universal frowning down on him. This is fate telling him to turn around and go home. This is a  _ coincidence _ .

Damian freezes. Todd freezes. They both stare at each other for several long seconds. Then Todd’s gaze flickers up to the sunlight peeking between the buildings. Dawn. Damian not in his Robin uniform. The stuffed backpack over his shoulder. It takes him seconds to put it together.

“Going somewhere?” he asks. Damian doesn’t need to squint up past the morning glare to be sure there is a grin on his face. Probably a mocking one.

Damian debates lying. He could say he was doing undercover monitoring of one of the gangs. He just came by to pick up a few things he left at a safehouse. He’s about to head back home now. But Todd is the kind of infuriating person who would insist on escorting him to the door. And then he’d probably invite himself in for some of Alfred’s pancakes for breakfast.

So Damian straightens his shoulders, lifts his chin and says, “I am leaving.” A pause while a motorbike roars past and Todd raises an eyebrow at him. “You can either help me or you can get out of my way.”

“Sure kid,” Todd says easily (too easily?), “I’ll help you run away. You just gotta answer me one question first.” He leans closer, green-rimmed eyes searching Damian’s face, pulling him apart and peeling back the bravado. “Why are you doing it?”

“He does not need me.”

Todd snorts. “Maybe, but I kinda get the impression that he  _ wants _ you.”

Damian shakes his head. Maybe Grayson did want him around, but surely he wouldn’t anymore. Not after his screw-up last night. Not after he got him hurt.

This is Dick Grayson, though, smiling Batman and dedicated big brother. This is the man who forgave Father no matter how big their fight (and Damian knows, from the intelligence his mother collected, that one of them lasted years). This is the man who keeps trying to pull Todd back into the family no matter how much he resists. This is the man who spends so much energy looking out for this city he has hardly any to spare for looking after himself. He may be angry or disappointed about what happened, but he will still want Damian to stay, to continue fighting by his side. 

But Grayson is idealistic and optimistic, his judgement clouded by all the good he sees in the world. He does not always know what is best for himself, too busy trying to make things best for those he loves. Damian is not being selfish running away. He is not hiding from anger and disappointment like a coward. He is not trying to escape his own guilt. He is being selfless. He is doing what Grayson has taught him: what’s best for those he loves.

“He should not want me,” Damian says to Todd. He scuffs a toe on the rough concrete and doesn’t meet the older boy’s eyes. “All I do is mess things up and cause pain.  _ Nobody _ should want me.”

_ Mother _ doesn’t.

_ Father  _ didn’t.

Perhaps this is why. Damian isn’t good enough, he couldn’t even protect his partner from one stupid thug with meta powers. He couldn’t even hold his own well enough that Grayson didn’t have to jump in front of him and take a debilitating blow.

Todd sighs. “Shit, kid, you’re not all bad.”

Damian does not care for the platitudes. He pushes past Todd’s shoulder and stalks down the street. Behind him, Todd curses and then then there is the heavy tread of booted feet on the pavement, chasing after him. 

“I will not let you stop me,” Damian snarls at him, dodging away from the hand that reaches for his shoulder.

“Fine, fine.” Todd is in front of him now, walking backwards, hands held up as if in surrender. “Jesus, brat, you’re touchy this morning. But because I’m a nice person I’ll still help you, okay? I’ve got a safehouse near here with a bike the Bat doesn’t know about.”

Damian glares at him, suspicious of the easily won help and Todd’s motives. But the vehicle he had hoped to steal from the garage under the League-owned apartment had not been there. Taken or broken and never replaced. His only other plan to get out of the city had been to get on a bus and hope nobody questioned why a ten-year-old was travelling alone. He had not been looking forward to that bus trip. So, grudgingly, he gestures for Todd to lead the way and follows him down the street.

—

His arm is throbbing by the time he drives into the Upper West Side, guided by a flash of a familiar navy hoodie on a security camera and knowledge Damian doesn’t know he possesses. A pulsing headache teams up with the pain in his aim and it’s enough to make Dick feel like he’s either going to pass out or throw up. He stubbornly pushes both feelings away.

He shouldn’t be out here. Not after Alfred just pumped him full of drugs and pinned his arm back together.

But he couldn’t just  _ let _ Damian go. Not after all the effort he’s invested in making him want to stay. Or, he’d thought so at least. Thought Damian had settled in and decided he wanted to stay, be part of the family, be Dick’s little brother, be his Robin. Now he’s not so sure. If Damian really does want to leave, though, he won’t stop him, but he’s at least going to make sure he does it properly. Packing more than a backpack, organising things like transport and food. 

Saying goodbye.

Dick’s one-handed grip on the steering wheel tightens. Beside him, his phone lights up. Alfred discovering he’s not napping like he said he was going to, calling to rain down his wrath and disappointment. Dick hears it buzz and buzz and buzz while he stares at the red light ahead.

The phone screen goes dark, then lights up again with the arrival of a new voicemail. And below it, the text he received fifteen minutes ago from Jason:  **Found something you lost.**

Dick grits his teeth against his body, and the voice in his head that sounds like Alfred, telling him to stop being an idiot and go back home before he does more damage to his arm, or gets someone else hurt. The traffic light turns green. He puts on his blinker and turns right toward Coventry. He’ll go home and rest after he’s found Damian and figured out why the hell he ran away. And knocked whatever insane reasoning he gives out of his head so he can bring him home.

—

The problem with Batman and Robin is that they only operate at night, and crime in Gotham doesn’t stop for daylight hours. Crime in Gotham also doesn’t care that the garage it has chosen to have a shootout in houses a beautiful grey Aprilla Tuono V4 1100RR belonging to the Red Hood. Usually, this wouldn’t be a problem; justice would be swiftly dealt and crime would limp away from the encounter incredibly sore but not really dissuaded. And then Todd would pull the cover off the bike and Damian would ride off away from the sunrise.

But this particular crime is a gang fight between two factions of the Intergang who have different ideas about how the weapons they’re smuggling should be used. Weapons with a lot of firepower and a lot of twitchy fingers handling them. It had been annoying, but not really surprising, when the gang members spilled into the garage and bullets started flying seconds later.

It’s not the kind of fight Damian Wayne and Jason Todd can get involved in. Not without body armour and the fear their masks evoke. So they’re hiding, crouched down behind a cluttered workbench at the back of the building, waiting for the gang to get sick of shooting each other up and leave, or for a distraction big enough to give them a chance to sneak out of here. They’ve been here too long, witnessed too much, and there’s no way the gang let them leave alive if they find them.

This is not have how his plan was supposed to go. Everything was going well until he ran into trouble-magnet Todd. Damian huffs in irritation.

“Shhh,” Todd whispers. His hand is over Damian’s mouth and his other arm is holding him tight in case Damian tries to run headlong into the gang fight. But Damian is completely still against his chest. He’s not scared, no matter what this… cowering might suggest. He is merely cautious. There are rules, he knows, about engaging with criminals out of costume. Namely: “Do not do it. Ever, Damian. It puts your life and our identities at risk.” Todd, he had thought, would not have the same reservations. 

But the last twenty-two minutes have been an enlightening insight into several aspects of Todd’s personality that Damian was wrong about. For example: he is neither as impulsive nor as uninterested in the lives of his family as the Red Hood’s file would have one believe. His sense of direction isn’t as good as a vigilante’s should be either, since he managed to turn them around  _ twice _ before they finally found the run-down auto shop his bike is hidden in. It was almost like he didn’t want them to get to the bike. But that’s probably just the paranoia speaking, because what reason would Todd have for delaying Damian’s departure from Gotham?

\--

Shouting and gunshots. Not an unusual occurrence in Gotham, but one that is particularly worrying right now because it’s coming from the location Jason texted him to collect Damian from.  

Dick shouldn’t interfere. He’s in no condition to fight and he’s not Batman, or even Nightwing, right now. He’s just Dick Grayson, injured civilian.

He steps into the building anyway.

Alfred always says he needs to stop making rash decisions with his heart and make educated ones with his head instead. The problem, though, is that those two parts of him are intertwined. Anytime someone he loves is in danger, his brain is going to tell him that rescuing them is the only option. He doesn’t know for sure that Jason and Damian are in the building, but there is a high probability that they are. It’s enough to have Dick moving. Losing Damian because he ran away is one thing; Dick isn’t willing to risk losing him because he got caught in the middle of a firefight. 

—

A shadow scuttles across the ground and then a third body is crowding into their huddle. Damian tenses, fingers itching for a batarang he isn’t carrying, thinking it is one of the hostiles who won’t hesitate to draw fire onto some innocent cannon fodder instead of their own head. But when he glances over his shoulder, he realises it is worse. Much worse.

“You should not be out here - you are injured!” he hisses.

“Yeah well, you ran off,” Grayson retorts just as quietly.

And Damian is doused in another wave of icy guilt because running away was supposed to stop Grayson from getting hurt but now it’s just going to get him more hurt. Being there was not enough to protect him and leaving apparently wasn’t either. It seems like he can’t do anything right.

“Do we have a plan?” Grayson asks Todd.

“Get him out of here,” Todd replies, and there’s a movement of arms to push him away from Todd and toward Grayson. “I’ll distract them while you sneak out the back.” 

Damian tenses - ready to move or argue, insist that he should be the one protecting not being protected - but before he can do anything, there’s a loud shout and a spray of gunfire above their heads.

“Go!” Todd orders.

No time for distraction. No time for sneaking. They move in sync; ducking and running and spilling out into Gotham’s weak attempt at bright, sunny daylight. Up a fire escape, onto a roof, seeking familiar (safe) ground. Adrenaline singing through their veins, putting distance between them and the auto shop, until they stumble to a stop a block away.

And it hits Damian, suddenly and with enough force to make his chest ache, as he turns to check that Grayson is still behind him. He doesn’t want to leave. Not Gotham, not Robin, not Grayson. Not even Todd.

“I’m sorry,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut so they don’t betray him by leaking salty tears. He sniffs. “I’m sorry I got you hurt. I know what I did wrong, it won’t happen again, I’ll do better. Please don’t kick me out.”

“Woah, woah, calm down, Dami.” 

Grayson’s good hand grasps his shoulder and turns him toward the man’s chest, then his arm wraps around him and hugs him tightly, uncaring of the weight it presses against this injured arm.

“That’s why you ran away?” He sounds horrified. “You thought I’d kick you out because some meta broke my arm while we were on patrol together?”

Damian nods. He curls his fingers into Grayson’s shirt, trying to shove back emotions and stop the way he’s trembling.“I should have protected you,” he says into his brother’s collar. “I should have been able to stop that meta before he hurt you.”  _ I should have been good enough that you didn’t need to protect me. _

“Hey, none of that, okay? What happened wasn’t your fault,” Grayson says firmly. “You probably saved my life, actually, by getting us out of there when you did. So no more blaming yourself. And no more running away.” His hold tightens and it must be causing him pain to hug Damian like this for so long, but he doesn’t let him pull away. “God, Dames, I was so worried about you. I thought you’d been abducted or something until I got Jason’s text.”

Damian stiffens. “Todd texted you?” He pulls away suddenly, misses the wince on Grayson’s face as he spins around to direct his ire at the third, awkwardly loitering member of their group. “You texted him?!”

Todd shrugs, entirely unrepentant. “I knew anything I said wouldn’t be worth a dime unless you heard it from Dickie’s mouth too.”

Damian grinds his teeth together so hard his jaw creaks. He is alarmed to find that the tears that had been drying are now coming back with a vengeance. “You lied! You said you’d help me but you were never going to!”

This, at least, gets to Todd and he winces.

“Jason was just trying to help-“ Grayson starts and Damian recoils from his soothing tone. He is not a child who needs to be placated. He doesn’t need big brothers interfering with some misguided notion of his ‘best interest’ at heart.

“I don’t need his help!” Damian yells. “I don’t need anyone’s help!”

He is three angry steps toward the edge of the roof, resolve to get away from Gotham hardened because being here is clearly just a distraction from them looking out for themselves - one that has gotten Grayson hurt already, when Todd says, “Yeah, well, maybe we need you. Did you think of that?” And Damian freezes.

“You’re just saying that so I don’t leave,” he argues, hating how small his voice sounds.

The shuffle of boots through the detritus and filth that pervades almost every inch of Gotham, then Grayson kneels in front of Damian, good hand coming to rest on his shoulder. His smile is gentle but taut with the pain he must be feeling. “And why do you think we’re trying to stop you from leaving, kiddo? We want you around.”

It should be easy to accept that, to throw himself back into Grayson’s arms for another hug, apologise for doing everything wrong (again), let himself be taken back to the penthouse (back home). But he’s feeling confused and angry and off-kilter from all the mixed signals his brain has received. Todd was going to help him run away… but doesn’t actually want him to. Grayson should be mad at him… but is just happy he’s okay. He was sure leaving was the right thing to do… but now he thinks maybe staying would be better.

Grayson will heal and they can still fly through the night as Batman and Robin. And next time they come across a meta, Damian will move a little faster, hit a little harder, be a little better. Just to be sure Grayson never has to question his decision to keep Damian around.

He knows he won’t though. Because it’s Grayson, and if there’s anything Damian can be sure about, it’s that he won’t let family go without a fight. And any doubts Damian had that family didn’t extent to him have been washed away by Grayson’s stubbornness and Todd’s insightful words. All it took was one bad night and a (in hindsight) childish caving to flight instead of fight.

“If I go back with you,” Damian says, slowly, teasing out the thought, “Do you think Pennyworth will make those pumpkin pancakes for breakfast?”

Grayson grins at him. “I think he’ll make whatever you want.”

“C’mon, kid.” Todd slings an arm around his shoulder. It’s almost… Damian doesn’t think he’s ever had a hug from Todd before. It’s nice. “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat to me on tumblr 


End file.
